Did CDP just kill the DMP?

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Joshua Koran is currently Sizmek’s Managing Director for their data enablement product line.

Joshua is a true pioneer in digital marketing, behavioral targeting, data marketplaces and data management platforms with nearly 20 years’ experience in these domains. AdWeek recently recognized his contributions to this field, in which he holds 22 patents, by naming him one of the top innovators in the space.

Among his many accomplishments, he designed the industry’s first predictive behavioral targeting platform, the first data marketplace ad network, and the first three-screen (TV, mobile, display) behavioral profiling platform. Over the course of his international career, he has lead product, engineering, data science, user experience, business development, and commercialization teams in companies such as Turn, AT&T, Yahoo!, and ValueClick. Through his digital consultancy, he has helped nearly two dozen other digital advertising companies improve their understanding and monetization of online data.

Joshua holds B.A. from Boston College, J.D. Law from U.C. Hastings College of the Law and M.B.A. from Oxford University.

Many Customer Data Platform vendors argue there are strong distinctions between their technology, a Data Management Platform (DMP) and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Is this true? Here are key similarities and differences between all three platforms, answers, Sizmek’s Managing Director of DMP, Joshua Koran.

Many Customer Data Platform (CDP) vendors argue there are strong distinctions between their technology, a Data Management Platform (DMP) and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Is this true?

Defining CDP Success with 5 Must-have Use-Cases for Enterprises

While there is no single agreed upon definition of what a CDP (or DMP for that matter) is, here are key similarities and differences between all three consumer data management platforms.

Typical Administrator

The first major difference among these platforms is the traditional end user. CRM systems evolved from data warehouses, and were designed for highly technical IT staff. Using SQL commands, administrators generate target lists of customers for analysis and syndication to direct marketing systems. In addition, CRM platforms help with data hygiene and enrichment of missing information in first-party data.

DMPs evolved from digital media buying platforms, and were designed for marketers and ad operations teams. DMPs help marketers enrich first-party website and campaign data with third-party audience information, and syndicate curated target audiences to other platforms.

CDPs and DMPs are both designed to be managed without knowledge of SQL and offer point-and-click interfaces to accomplish most tasks. More advanced CDPs and digital advertising platforms also expose SQL interfaces to the backend data, but the majority of users still operate these platforms via simple graphical user interfaces.

Another distinction between CDP and DMP systems is their ability to handle semi-structured data. This contrasts CRM systems as they are designed around relational structures each profile has a predefined structure, even if certain records do not have complete information stored in this structure. Because they are designed to interface with a greater number of source systems, CDP and DMP systems can ingest structured and semi-structured data.

Primary Engagement Channels

One distinguishing feature of CDPs from DMPs is they use a persistent customer-identifier that ties back to a natural person. Because of their customer IDs, CDPs are often compared to CRM systems. A key difference is CRM systems focus on existing customer registration and purchase data, while CDPs enable brands to collect and analyze direct marketing response data. An additional difference is CRM focuses almost exclusively on outbound marketing use cases, while CDP aims to provide an inward-focus centralization of customer records to support different organizational departments.

While CRM systems generate direct mail and email lists, CDPs are built to ingest far more data from different systems as well as syndicate this information back out to additional channels.

The industry continues to redefine itself and new solutions are introduced, making it increasingly important to recognize the differences among consumer data management platforms and data management platforms. Data is the fuel that drives each marketing campaign’s success. By understanding where these platforms overlap and for which purposes each is best used, marketers can invest in the right tools to orchestrate their campaigns and improve customer engagement.